R.I.P.s in Threes

Any celebrity on his or her deathbed at the moment would do well to hang on for a few more days. It's already been quite a week for famous fatalities and there isn't much ink left to spare on the subject of fallen stars.

A few days ago it was Ed McMahon, the jovial, gruff-voiced Johnny Carson sidekick whose passing was sad, but not exactly tragic given that he was 86 years old.

Then came yesterday's double-whammy. Actress Farrah Fawcett died of cancer at age 62 earlier in the day, but only a few hours later Michael Jackson ruined her closeup by having a fatal heart attack (or so it seems) at the age of 50.

McMahon was old and Fawcett had battled cancer for years, so neither of their deaths were particularly shocking. Jackson, however, is another story. He became famous before he hit puberty, moved on to become the world's biggest - and biggest-selling - pop star in part by cranking out videos filled with youthful fantasy images and spent the last few years of life raising his own children and fending off accusations of molesting other kids. 50 is awfully young to die, but it seems even younger in Jackson's case because his public persona was that of a man whose emotional and intellectual maturing process had halted somewhere in his tween years. He was always and forever a child.

Jackson had been rehearsing for a comeback tour in the past few months, but his early death may actually be the best thing that could happen to his musical legacy, which his strangeness had come to overshadow. He is, after all, the creator of dozens of massive hits, the man who carried music television on his back during its first few uncertain years and the artist who definitively shattered racial divisions in pop music. He influenced just about every mainstream artist that came after him on some level or another with his showmanship, iconography and, of course, his tunes.

He'll never again have to defend himself against accusations of pedophilia, he'll never have another plastic surgery and he'll never dangle another baby out of a window, and as time goes by, those incidents will gradually fade from public memory. At some point then, Jackson will be judged on his merits as an artist. And while I'm not a major fan, I can acknowledge that he stands among the best on any objective level.